In a down market like the one the wine industry faces today, wineries are taking different paths to adapt. Some pull back, reducing production or pulling vineyards. Others seek to acquire struggling wineries, consolidating to broaden their portfolio and leverage their production facilities. Another route is to premiumize their brands to rise above the fray and appeal to confirmed oenophiles with white glove winemaking and customer service. The other turn along the price path is to downgrade to a more affordable price to attract shoppers who are increasingly price-conscious in this economy. These are only a few of a bewildering array of choices for wineries, and the decision tree will take each winery owner or winemaker to a unique solution. Chris HollingsworthChris Hollingsworth, General Manager at Punchdown Cellars in Santa Rosa, outlines three reasons a winery might choose a custom crush facility like the one he runs. “An established brand might want to change facilities to tak

Afternoon Brief, April 17th

Oregon State Researchers Make Breakthrough in Understanding the Chemistry of Wildfire Smoke in Wine: Oregon State University researchers have discovered a new class of compounds that contributes to the ashy or smoky flavors in wine made with grapes exposed to wildfire smoke...

While associated with fun and frivolity, sparkling wine is a complex wine of many moving parts that requires serious skill to make. We catch up with some of the leading lights in the fizz industry, from Champagne, Spain and England, to find out the secrets of their craft and the challenges surrounding creating a consistent sparkling wine style in an ever-changing climate. Synonymous with celebration, sparkling wines are easy to enjoy but challenging to create. Crafting quality fizz requires a skilled hand, well-trained nose, razor-sharp intuition and nerves of steel come harvest time, when deciding on the perfect moment to pick feels like a game of Russian roulette. Cellar masters are the wizards of the wine world, able to create a consistent style of wine each year from hundreds of elements amid increasingly erratic weather conditions. They have to be time travellers too, projecting themselves into the future when tasting aggressively acidic base wines, working out how they will harmo